Rant - grad students should not be allowed to teach undergrad classes.

[notfred]

OK, so I'm taking this assembly language class. We have a lab. The assignment is to write a program that prompts the user for 4 numbers and adds them together. ok, fine, it takes about 10 minutes to do. I print it out and go to turn it in, our "instructor" looks at it, and says "it should prompt for 4 different numbers..." I had used a single prompt over 4 times (it would just say "enter a number" four times, he wants it to say 'enter the first number, enter the second... etc). I ask "why does it matter? it seems apparent that I know how it works" or something like that, and he gets all pissy "fine, I'll take your program, but you're losing points!" So I go back and add the stupid four prompts, then go to turn it in again. "It needs comments" Argh, it's 16 lines long, it's the same four lines repeated over four times. How many comments could it need? So I jsut write some comments on the printout "reads from screen", "writes to screen", "adds to result", etc. he says "Next time don't write on there with pen"

I hate when someone takes a class and makes the focus of the class not the subject matter but the anal details in the instructors redundant instructions.

And about the title - this guy is a grad student, he can't teach worth crap, his idea of teaching is: (as he's introducing the concept of registers) "Does anyone know what a register is?" no one answers, he gets pissed cause no one knows, even though he hasn't taought us yet! He asks us these same "anyone know what this does?" questions before EVERY topic. It's annoying as hell. And all my other grad student instructors have sucked, too.

 

[Fausto]

I agree with you. 90% of the grad student instructors I had at Emory absolutely sucked. Sure, they knew their stuff, but their teaching skills were pathetic. If I'm paying that much to attend the damn class, the least they could do is give me a real instructor. :|

 

[StageLeft]

Those who can't do, teach. At the IT school I went to damn near all of the instructors were useless.

 

[shiner]

I taught a few classes back in the days when I was working on my Masters....mostly low level stuff that the full professors didn't want to teach. Had more than one student tell me I was doing better than the real professor simply because I seemed interested in teaching the class and having them learning. Then again I also had an Asian kid go ballistic on me because he couldn't understand me and I couldn't understand him. Finally told him he needed to learn English before coming back to class. It was the next year that the University started cracking down on foreign students and professors not having a full command of the language. I can't tell you how many classes I was in where some of the foreign students had no idea what American professors were saying or where the professor was some other nationality and the American students couldn't understand them.

 

[Pastore]

I understand what your saying, but it solely depends upon the grad student. I had one my first year for a networking fundementals course. That guy kicked so much ass... He taught us well, and taught us a lot more that helped all of us further into the major... I decided I hated the major and dropped it though... But, the guy you have is a dick head...

 

Originally posted by: Fausto1
I agree with you. 90% of the grad student instructors I had at Emory absolutely sucked. Sure, they knew their stuff, but their teaching skills were pathetic. If I'm paying that much to attend the damn class, the least they could do is give me a real instructor. :|

The problem is that you're really not paying enough. If every student at your school were willing to pay $35,000 - $40,000 per year for maybe 14 credit hours, then they'd be able to afford ALL professors and no GSIs. But you're not, and thus, your school can't afford it. Small, private colleges are better in that respect, but the trade off is that you won't be able to get the breadth of studies that you'll get from a large public university (like my school).

 

[MomAndSkoorbaby]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Those who can't do, teach. At the IT school I went to damn near all of the instructors were useless.

Oh really. So are you saying I am not a good nurse because some day, I would love to teach at a University? Huh? HUH?

 

[Deeko]

I've got 2 grad students for recitation teachers, they are doin fine so far. I think any teacher can exhibit the traits you complained about.

 

[StageLeft]

Originally posted by: MrsSkoorb

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Those who can't do, teach. At the IT school I went to damn near all of the instructors were useless.

Oh really. So are you saying I am not a good nurse because some day, I would love to teach at a University? Huh? HUH?

If it looks like a duck, and it sounds like a duck... - er, I mean what do you want for Christmas?

 

[PsychoAndy]

Originally posted by: MrsSkoorb

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Those who can't do, teach. At the IT school I went to damn near all of the instructors were useless.

Oh really. So are you saying I am not a good nurse because some day, I would love to teach at a University? Huh? HUH?

RUN SKOORB! RUN SKOORB RUN!



-PAB

 

[Aves]

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Originally posted by: MrsSkoorb

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Those who can't do, teach. At the IT school I went to damn near all of the instructors were useless.

Oh really. So are you saying I am not a good nurse because some day, I would love to teach at a University? Huh? HUH?

If it looks like a duck, and it sounds like a duck... - er, I mean what do you want for Christmas?

Are you posting from work?

 

[Fausto]

Originally posted by: JuMpR629

Originally posted by: Fausto1
I agree with you. 90% of the grad student instructors I had at Emory absolutely sucked. Sure, they knew their stuff, but their teaching skills were pathetic. If I'm paying that much to attend the damn class, the least they could do is give me a real instructor. :|

The problem is that you're really not paying enough. If every student at your school were willing to pay $35,000 - $40,000 per year for maybe 14 credit hours, then they'd be able to afford ALL professors and no GSIs. But you're not, and thus, your school can't afford it. Small, private colleges are better in that respect, but the trade off is that you won't be able to get the breadth of studies that you'll get from a large public university (like my school).

Um....Emory is a small, expensive-as-hell, private school and I still had a ton of crappy TA's. :|

Undergraduate Expenses 2002-03

Tuition $26,600
Fees 332
Room 5,348
Board 3,150
Estimated Books & Supplies 700
Estimated Travel & Incidentals 1,300
Total $37,430

 

[Deeko]

The problem is that you're really not paying enough. If every student at your school were willing to pay $35,000 - $40,000 per year for maybe 14 credit hours, then they'd be able to afford ALL professors and no GSIs. But you're not, and thus, your school can't afford it. Small, private colleges are better in that respect, but the trade off is that you won't be able to get the breadth of studies that you'll get from a large public university (like my school).

heh....my school costs 32K/year.

 

[StageLeft]

Yep posting from work between things to do!

 

[kherman]

Originally posted by: notfred
OK, so I'm taking this assembly language class. We have a lab. The assignment is to write a program that prompts the user for 4 numbers and adds them together. ok, fine, it takes about 10 minutes to do. I print it out and go to turn it in, our "instructor" looks at it, and says "it should prompt for 4 different numbers..." I had used a single prompt over 4 times (it would just say "enter a number" four times, he wants it to say 'enter the first number, enter the second... etc). I ask "why does it matter? it seems apparent that I know how it works" or something like that, and he gets all pissy "fine, I'll take your program, but you're losing points!" So I go back and add the stupid four prompts, then go to turn it in again. "It needs comments" Argh, it's 16 lines long, it's the same four lines repeated over four times. How many comments could it need? So I jsut write some comments on the printout "reads from screen", "writes to screen", "adds to result", etc. he says "Next time don't write on there with pen"

I hate when someone takes a class and makes the focus of the class not the subject matter but the anal details in the instructors redundant instructions.

And about the title - this guy is a grad student, he can't teach worth crap, his idea of teaching is: (as he's introducing the concept of registers) "Does anyone know what a register is?" no one answers, he gets pissed cause no one knows, even though he hasn't taought us yet! He asks us these same "anyone know what this does?" questions before EVERY topic. It's annoying as hell. And all my other grad student instructors have sucked, too.

About the comments, I have to agree with the grad student. DETAIL DETAIL DETAIL. I'm in industry as a Software Engineer and this can not be stressed enough.

Also coming from industry, the HW is like requirments. if you met the requirments of hte HW as they are stated, the grad student has no argument. If the HW only states functionality and has no mention if the interface, the grad student is wrong and you should point it out. He shouldn't complain if you make a valid argument. If he does, tell him you making copies and going to talk to department officials. You went to him, so the next step is to go to your superior. I'd imagine you should talk to your advisor.

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

notfred, you sound like you got sour grapes dude. so the grad student had a specific format he was looking for, AT LEAST he told you before you turned it in. Sounds like you got all pissed off b/c you had to revise.

Timely subject, I filled in for a lecture today. A senior level class, and it was over some readings which I don't think many of the students actually read. I spent 5 hours going over the lecture notes and readings, connecting material to previous lectures, etc... I think it went pretty good, but I am sure a few students were like WTF is he doing up there and where is our regular Prof. Oh well, as far as I am concerned thats their problem.

 

[Maverick]

I hate grad students that can't speak english and are supposed to be TAs. Nothing pisses me off more. I had this Chinese TA whom no one could understand. He pronounced the word 'queue' as 'qwee'. His handwriting was also illegible. And if you tried to ask him a question about an assignment he couldn't give you an answer because he'd be sitting there trying to figure out how to translate something. I think they need to make every TA pass the TOEFL speaking exam. Right now they only make the people that actually teach the class take it. I think TAs should take it too.

 

[Armitage]

It depends. If you get a good TA, they're often better then a prof. that doesn't want to be bothered teaching undergrads. Often more accesible for out-of-class help as well.
But there are some that really suck. I've had both.

 

[Aves]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Yep posting from work between things to do!

That's how it starts!

 

[PaNsyBoy8]

I'm sure GSI's dislike being there as much as you do, its extra work for them. Most Universities force their Grad Students to teach. Just imagine how it would be like if you were in there shoes.

 

[zzzz]

wow, you got one bad grad student teacher and you say they should not be allowed to teach? You think if his teaching abilities somehow depend on the grad school? If you get a professor who is a bad teacher, will you say "don't allow Professors to teach?"

 

[piku]

Hmm, I have two grad students teaching classes (one a basic college math course and another my psychology recitation) and I think both are doing quite a good job.

 

[Zebo]

Those who can't do, teach. At the IT school I went to damn near all of the instructors were useless

I don't know I kinda liked my moms shedule growing up. She'd teach at calpoly from 10am- 2:30pm (4.5 hours) and always be home before we left for school and when when came home. As an added bonus she was able to be on vacation when us kids were outta school. Plus she made close to six fiqures.

I guess what I'm tring to say it's a lifestyle choice.

 

[AvesPKS]

Heh...that's why I love going to a small school. 3 years down and not a single professor without a Doctorate. We have TA's for the labs, but they're not responsible for teaching us anything. Also, I'd tend to agree with you on the input statements, but commenting is very important in assembly (all coding, for that matter). The point wasn't that 16 simple lines of code need commenting, but to get you in the habit of commmenting so you don't get confused when you have a 100 line program.

By the way, what chip are you using? Us EE's use the MC68000, while the CPE's and CS's use MIPS.

 

[MrBond]

The problem is that you're really not paying enough. If every student at your school were willing to pay $35,000 - $40,000 per year for maybe 14 credit hours, then they'd be able to afford ALL professors and no GSIs. But you're not, and thus, your school can't afford it. Small, private colleges are better in that respect, but the trade off is that you won't be able to get the breadth of studies that you'll get from a large public university (like my school).

That's not always the case. At my college (public university, tuition is like $5500/yr), all undergraduate courses are taught by professors. The exception to the rule is labs and recitation sections.

Our lab TA's were almost universally bad. We did have a couple really cool guys for a couple semesters, but the rest of them were bad. We had this one french guy who didn't pronouce his "h's" very well. He was asking us one day "what happens when you eat..." something, and whatever it was was toxic, so we told him it'd be fatal. It took us a little while to understand what he really ment. The language barrier was almost always a big one with the foreign TA's that we had